Carbon capture and storage in Australia

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an approach to mitigate global warming by capturing carbon dioxide CO₂ from large point sources such as fossil fuel power plants and storing it instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. CCS is also used for EOR to increase yield from declining oil fields, and for storage of CO₂ from natural gas fields.

No coal-fired power station in Australia presently has CCS of CO₂. CCS is not presently a viable technology for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power stations and is not expected, even by its proponents, to be commercially viable until at least 2020. The IPCC estimates that the economic potential of CCS could be between 10% and 55% of the total carbon mitigation effort until year 2100.

Benefits

1. Fossil fuels are capable of generating electricity 24 hours per day unlike renewables such as wind and solar.
2. Australia has significant deposits of coal allowing economic benefits for years to come without significant environmental impacts.
3. CCS can be used to capture CO2 from high-emission industrial processes such as the making of certain chemicals, steel and cement.

Challenges

1. Cost of CCS will make coal-fired electricity more expensive than wind power
2. Leakage from underground or undersea reservoirs
3. Scarcity of potential sites and capacity compared to volumes of greenhouse gas needed to be sequestered on an ongoing basis
4. Existing power stations unlikely to be able to have carbon capture technology retrofitted
5. CCS is forecast to require up to 30% more coal than conventional plants to cover the energy needs of CCS, and that extra coal must first be mined (which has environmental effects) and transported to the plant (which takes energy)
6. Infrastructure required would take years to build
7. emissions of acid rain-causing gases like nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides of a plant that captures CO₂ will up to 40 percent greater than the total cradle-to-grave emissions of a modern plant that doesn't capture its CO₂ because of the extra coal burnt

Transport of CO₂

In Australia, the major emissions sites are in the Latrobe and Hunter Valleys. The Latrobe Valley has some potential storage within a few hundred kilometres in Bass Strait oil fields but this requires expensive off shore development. There are no particularly promising large storage prospects near the Hunter Valley. Geologically most prospective areas are the North West Shelf (thousands of kilometres from emissions sources) and Bass Strait. The costs in Australia are therefore likely to be substantially more than for some other countries.

Liability for leakage

The world's first laws to allow companies to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power stations and bury them under the seabed are under consideration in Canberra. A federal parliamentary committee has given the green light to burying carbon pollution under the ground - and suggested taxpayers pay any clean-up bills. If legislated this would be a huge taxpayer subsidy to polluters.

Commercial projects in operation

At present, there are no large scale commercial CCS projects within Australia. Some demonstration and proposed projects and projects under construction are listed below with brief descriptions.

Demonstration projects

CO2CRC Otway Project

The CO2CRC Otway Project in Western Victoria is a demonstration project which has injected and stored over 65,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in a depleted natural gas reservoir 2km below the Earth’s surface. There has been no sign of leakage according to a comprehensive monitoring and verification program. Carbon dioxide and natural gas are extracted from a gas well, then compressed and piped to a new injection well two kilometres away. The gases are then injected into the depleted gas field. A nearby well is used to monitor the injected carbon dioxide. A second stage of the project, involving evaluation of carbon dioxide storage in deep saline formations, is under development and due to commence in 2010/11. The project is Australia's first demonstration of geosequestration and the world's largest geosequestration research project. This area has active exploration for geothermal and petroleum resources and has been supported by geotechnical work completed by the public sector and the private sector.

Latrobe Valley Post Combustion Capture Project

This is a joint collaboration between Loy Yang Power, International Power Hazelwood, government and researchers from CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship and CO2CRC (including Monash and Melbourne Universities). The 10.5-metre-high pilot plant is designed to capture up to 1000 tonnes of CO₂ per annum from the power station's exhaust-gas flues. Future trials will involve the use of a range of different CO₂-capture liquids. On 9 July 2008, CSIRO Energy Technology Chief Dr David Brockway announced that carbon dioxide (CO₂) had been captured from power station flue gases in a post-combustion-capture (PCC) pilot plant at Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. The pilot plant would have to be scaled up 12,500 times to capture the emissions from the power station.

Further government projects in this area has led to many geo-technical studies that review gas and liquid migration, trapping and leakage. While the Gippsland area has been described as a basin margin, this is somewhat vague. The area defines a major fold belt onshore and offshore. The key risk to injection of CO₂ in the area is the ability to keep gas in the ground. Multiple regional and local studies over the area have been completed by government and private companies.

The CO2CRC/HRL Mulgrave Capture Project

CO2CRC has commissioned three carbon dioxide capture research rigs at HRL’s gasifier research facility at Mulgrave in Melbourne, Victoria. The CO2CRC rigs are capturing carbon dioxide from syngas, the product of the brown coal gasifier, using solvent, membrane and adsorbent technologies. The capture technologies are equally applicable to syngas from brown and black coal, gas or biomass fuels. During the project, researchers will evaluate each technology for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Advanced gasifier technologies are highly suitable for carbon dioxide capture for CCS as they produce a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide.

Proposed projects

Gorgon gas field, Barrow Island

This project led by Chevron will be designed to capture 3.5 Mt of carbon dioxide per annum from Greater Gorgon gas fields and store it in the Dupuy formation beneath the Barrow Island. The project will be the largest carbon dioxide sequestration operation in the world.^{[citation needed]}

WWF claims that the Gorgon geosequestration project is potentially unsafe as the area has over 700 wells drilled in the area, 50 of which reach the area proposed for geosequestration of CO₂. Fault lines compound the problems. Barrow Island is also an A class nature reserve of global importance.

Fairview project

The Fairview Project, near Roma in South West Queensland, is intended to capture 1/3 of the CO₂ emissions from a 100 MW coal seam methane gas-fired power station.

Hazelwood power station

Hazelwood is reputedly "the developed world’s most greenhouse-polluting power plant" largely because of its reliance on brown coal. It is planned that from 2008 it will capture about 18,000 tonnes per year from one of its 200 MW units, which is about 0.06%.

Callide Oxyfuel Project, Queensland

The Callide Oxyfuel Project is intended to demonstrate carbon capture using oxyfuel combustion, combined with carbon storage. The Oxyfuel boiler is presently scheduled to be operational in the Callide A power plant by 2011. The project team is assessing potential carbon storage sites to the west of the power plant. It plans to select the final location in 2009. The carbon dioxide will be transported in road tankers. The project is headed by CS Energy Ltd in conjunction with an international team of partners, including IHI Corporation (Japan), J-Power (Japan), Mitsui & Company (Japan) Schlumberger Oilfields Australia and Xstrata Coal. The Australian Coal Association, and the Commonwealth, Queensland and Japanese governments are providing financial support for the project. It is a project for the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

Delayed projects

Monash coal-to-liquids

On 2 December 2008 Shell and Anglo American announced that this possible brown coal project in the Latrobe Valley will not proceed at present. They have described it as a "long term" opportunity.

The planned project was planned to have some CCS, storing the gas captured in depleted off-shore oil fields in the Gippsland Basin in east Bass Strait.

Failed projects

BP Kwinana (WA) coal to gas plant

A proposed $2 billion "hydrogen energy" coal-to-gas plant will not proceed because the geological formations off Perth, which were intended to sequester the CO₂, contain gas "chimneys" that "mean it is next to impossible to establish a seal in the strata that could contain the CO2".

Zerogen power station

The Zerogen powerstation project near Stanwell power station in Queensland is proposed to be a 100 MW "Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle" power station with CCS. In late 2010, the Government of Queensland announced it would not fund the Zerogen project because it was not economically viable and that it would be sold off.

See also

• Coal mining in Australia
• Emissions trading
• Mandatory renewable energy targets
• Mitigation of global warming in Australia
• Renewable energy commercialization in Australia